What's Going On? And What Can be Done?

Odds are, the Salvation Army Christmas bell ringer under a flag that reads Sharing Is Caring, whose silver bell is legendary now, is never going to understand his own role in the big rip off even with his hand in the cookie jar. So, forget it that a banker or a dentist or a shoe salesman will ever see through the veil he hides behind. And the protest singer who dreams of a better day financially is not likely to hear his own song and fall down on his knees and admit his complicity in the crime he sees others committing. The only difference between the victim and the culprit today is the victim is feeling the pinch of his political world at the moment and it hurts. Take away his pain and he will protest on demand in the manner prescribed by his doctor or not at all. For example, the farmer whose land is restored to him is a born again patriot overnight with no patience for whiners. An environmentalist today is one who will go to any length to keep filth out of his habitat and never notices he enjoys a habitat when others have no place at all. Every bit of the foregoing is free of politics but you will not believe me. We are all Mister Jones in the singer's lament. No matter you clearly see the crooked deal going down there will be no change in your lifetime or mine and the singer will keep on saying, You don't know what it is that is going on, do you, Mister Jones?

We all live off the war.

So, in 1969 I was told this very thing. I wanted to change things. I found I could not. No system has ever been changed from within the system. No political action brings real change. I suggest this: an outsider be. However, since you are a product of the system you wish to see change, it will require a complete letting go of all you hold dear. Notice please how the only requirement to become an outsider is to cease everything. There is nothing to be done. Just clean up and stop aggravating the wound. Let nature handle the rest. You are actually a good person if you only knew yourself. In my own experience, when a person stops what he has been doing he attracts unconditional love from others and an epidemic of love erupts. A fountain is discovered that has always been here. Life takes on new meaning. Prosperity happens with abundance for all who are free of any system. (Life is not a system.)

Now, the above, too, is free of all politics and you still will not believe me. A picture has been drawn this way-

to have love you must lose love

to have wealth you must lose wealth

to have life you must lose it

This is so, for you hold the false so tightly to your bosom you do not know what love, wealth nor life happen truly to be. Give away all you have and come and follow me was never meant to be heard as give away your holdings and come be poor, wretched, and miserable with me. Oh, no. Not that. This paragraph, too, is free of all politics and you still will not believe me.

A rich man according to the world's measuring cannot enter the Kingdom of God. There. You have it. And, this, too, is free of all politics and still you will not believe me.

There is nothing can be done.

A Poem to Mystery

(whoever is that)

Mister Wordsworth writ a poem

to impress I no not who'm

but I know not who'm

has lately read a finer poem.

He told how he can no longer see

what he once saw when he was three.

In another he wrote it that

a child is father

to every grown-up cat.

There's a mystery within that!

Standin' Around

I was standin' around when someone asked me what I do. Me? I do not give talks to groups of people is all. And, I do that by invitation only, says I. For some reason they sent me an invitation. So, here I am.
To me, it looks like we are all standing in a huge circle on the lip of a gigantic abyss of darkness and we never even mention that abyss exists. But we know. And it is awkward to say the least to stand like this at the edge of solid earth before a gaping abyss of total darkness hoping of course not to fall into its scary mouth but not mentioning it to anyone, not even ourselves, that it is here. Right here where we stand.
But, I, naturally, being myself, am not going to discuss it with you since I do not make talks to groups and I do that by invitation only. However, upon actual receipt of the invitation, it came to my attention that to refuse the invitation would amount to an agreement to appear and make a talk to a group of people which I do not do and do that by invitation only. You know...to refuse an invitation not to make a talk can be an interpreted as an acceptance of an invitation to make one...This was a problem. I lost my balance became weak and staggered, mewling, and puking my guts out.
It was at that moment I became fully aware again of that dark abyss we are all standing in a circle around for it appeared before me so dramatically and frightened me so I fell into it...and, do you know what? That abyss is .........
that abyss is.....
believe it or not that abyss is....
Love.
Good night. Thank you for listening to my explanation and I hope it straightens out the matter of my appearance here. That is all. Good night again. 

Godliness

It has come to be for me that the term God is a symbol for a phenomenon in the nature of a living experience. The feeling is best described by me as wholeness. I mean a real experience of being complete. It is a feeling inside the body who was taught to call itself me or I (as some imaginary entity that could be held responsible for any errant behavior on the part of the body in question and correspondingly praised for conduct approved of by other imaginary personalities with names). All of which is to realty's dismay at the blatant and unacceptable mistreatment of its handiwork. And what happens is to be rediscovered by everyone who is born.

By the time I was seven, it came to be that I was actually two imaginary creatures co-existing inside the body aforementioned. And these two were at odds. There arose a war that lasted for many years up to the age of forty. One of the two was the good guy respected by the society of other divided goons. The other was a bad guy who would brook no rules and caused mayhem amidst the goon world. A way to describe the nature of goon world is to label it a political world. And whosoever upsets the political world without ceasing shall find peace and inherit the Earth.

A trick that went unnoticed was that the bad guy was a label (imaginary) for the actual essence of the being that is beheld as my aforementioned body. It has been called the Shadow Side. This the first act of evil on the Planet Earth. And the liar had dressed itself up as God Imagined. The Phenomenon of Wholeness would not divide its own world or what is wholeness for? All the other goons blamed a snake. This the second act of evil (and actually it amounts to the same act of evil as the first and so there is a single evil afoot). At this, Wholeness flew out the window. Or, did it? It has arisen and probably never left the body. Probably never died. Probably never shall die. Wholeness the phenomenon, that is. The Ungraspable Phantom it is in the body of a whale and a boy and a girl and a goldfish even. A rock? Water? Fire? Air?

A word about forgiveness then. It was a surprise to discover again that this term is not at all a performance between a superior being and an inferior being who has become remorseful enough to bow and scrape before its god and beg to be given a pass to heaven. It is a matter rather of realizing the wholeness within a being and correspondingly existent within all beings, and a simple Oh, my….

That is my experience. I am seventy now. But what is a number attached to a body to me? Wholeness, I mean. After all...

LOST ALREADY

What is the forgotten language Thomas Wolfe sought to find again, in order truly to go home again? Do you ever feel you have left something important behind in your rush to join into some celebration contrived by others before you to get you on their side of things? To get you speaking their language, thinking their thoughts, doing their waltz on promises never quite delivered? Sort of like an editor at a great publishing house using tricks to shape your beloved work into what can be sold for a profit measured by dollars? He lies to you about being a person dedicated to good books while castrating your wild newborn so it will never reproduce its particular line of sensational driftwood. Who has the figures to know what has been lost already?

Feel for one brief moment breathing in and out with beating heart look inward from a third eye opened by the gentlest touch of an index finger placed at a shallow groove just above the brow directly over the nose. Tap gently there ever so lightly keeping the other two eyes closed. The shadow within is the friend you have forgotten. The one with you in the crib who never left. Next, closing up the ears with the fat part of the thumbs, listen to an ocean that lies inside the protective skull from which a body is strung like an instrument for playing music to the bottom of the feet. If you have already named one, observe that you are a sort of tree with four branches that walks upon rather than being fastened within the earth. Observe it that you are a worm, if you have named one of those, with arms and legs. When you realize you are no big deal, notice how so many demons fall silent. When that has happened how do you feel now?

The Liberated Artist

One who is attached to no system and works not for money. One who works for the sheer joy of the work alone. One who trusts: nothing is plenty. One who believes that an artist is cared for by the unseen hand of love and mercy. There need be few of us to begin.

This is a program of attraction not promotion. Let us gather experience as a small group at first until we are certain we are ready to offer a plan to others. All that is required is a sincere effort in a direction to a place we have never been after jettisoning the baggage of all our tired, old ideas. In a hopeless condition, we are a group of men and women convinced we have nothing to lose.

Let someone take from you whatever you hold onto so you may be

without and penniless that you may thirst and hunger and so be

available to receive your treasure from within.

Is it not so that the meaning of the term Blue Moon is the revelation that our calendar is a false one …and that which we call moon knows it? So, if the calendar we order ourselves by is fake, what else is unreliable as well? Let it all- one by one- be taken in order that I may know the truth. Call me Ishmael. Beloved outcast. If you say it, it will be so.

Let someone take from you whatever you hold onto so you may be

without and penniless that you may thirst and hunger and so be

available to receive your treasure from within.

What were you born to hold? Do you know? Every relationship you have named and hold onto is false. Every role you play is false. Behold the stage! All the other players. My friends. My fellows. My comrades. My wife. My husband. My children. My cousin. My boss. My employee. My mother. My father. My God. My countryman. My associate. My brother. My enemy. My teacher. My student. My lover. My beloved.

Let someone take from you whatever you hold onto so you may be

without and penniless that you may thirst and hunger and so be

available to receive your treasure from within.

Do you even know how to be real for a second? A fraction of a second? Actor, do you remember being offstage? What were you carrying with you when you came to the first audition? Do you know the actor, as an actor? Who is it then who knows the actor? Who is that one? Let me introduce you. Actor, meet your true self. True self, meet the actor.

So, hand over all your precious holdings, the roles, and all the props. And walk away. Empty now. Leave the stage. Remove your mask. Leave the theatre. Go home. They are turning out the lights now. Go home, Actor. Actor, go home!